Jeffrey Blankfort wrote:
don't believe nor have I previously seen the argument made that
Hiroshima was targeted because it was an Army headquarters.
JW reply:
Hiroshima was a target of military significance. If you want me to dig
up the references and supply more facts, just say so.
JB wrote:
To destroy an army hq does not require the obliteration of an entire
city and its civilian population.
JW reply:
Neither one of us can put forward a credible argument on that point
without the detailed information on Hiroshima available in 1945 to the
planners who ordered the bombing.
JB wrote:
I have, however, always considered the bombing of Nagasaki the greater
crime....
JW reply:
Me too, and as I have stated before in my opinion there was no need for
the use of the atomic bomb, at least not in relation to the military
requirement to defeat Japan. Whether it was a crime or not and if so,
who were the criminals is another story. Personally I think that the
planners and politicians knew what they were doing and are culpable, the
aircrews not. Being ordered to drop tha A bomb does not register the
same as being ordered to bayonet a baby (a Japanese practice, ask the
survivors of Nanking).
JB wrote:
....had the Japanese won the war, the perpetrators would have most
assuredly been hanged or worse.
JW reply:
Unsupportable bombast, also highly improbable. What is the point?
JB wrote:
While we refrained from bombing Germany's industrial sector .... we ....
totally destroyed the cities of Dresden, Hamburg, and Cologne, which
had no military value, but whose obliteration served to demoralize
Germany's will to fight. Again, by the book, these were war crimes, but
since we won, the matter became academic.
JW reply:
Although I do not approve of the tactic of terror bombing civilians,
destroying an enemy's will to fight certainly has military value, so
scratch that arguement. As for the culpability of the pilots, you have
to put your self in their shoes with their knowledge and listen to the
rationale that they went on to judge that. Again, we are not asking
people to stick bayonets in babies so the perceived reality is not as
clear as you seem to want people to take responsibility for.
JB wrote:
In 1968, as I recall, a National Guard unit from Arkansas balked at
being sent to Chicago to police the Democratic Convention.... and when
the National Guard was called to assist the Alameda sheriffs.... one
guard member.... decided he'd had enough and refused to obey any more
orders.
JW reply:
Courageous moves that should be applauded, and a lot can be said for
regular military units that resisted the Vietnam War once consciousness
had been raised.
Probably the greatest contribution of the civilian anti-war movement to
ending the war was raising the debate and public opinion to the point
that enabled the appearance of the anti-war movement within the military
which threw the reliability of the military into the garbage can. Nixon
and Kissinger were saddled with an Army that could not be counted on to
fight effectively.
-- Jerry West Editor/publisher/janitor ---------------------------------------------------- THE RECORD On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast An independent, progressive regional publication http://www.island.net/~record/
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